A New Life

Chapter Two

"Come on Stark... you're scaring the kid!" A tall man with blonde hair appeared from behind the businessman and gave Alex a firm handshake. "I'm Steve. I apologise. Tony tends to get a little bit over-excited at times."

The man in question chuckled. "Don't worry about him. He's just annoyed at me because I hid his shield," he said with a smirk as he turned to the other man.

"Can someone please tell me what is going on here? How do they know my name?" he asked Peter. "And what are you-" Here Alex turned to face Natasha, who was walking towards him. "-doing here?" The men stopped bickering, and Steve put a hand on his shoulder.

"Allow me to explain," he said, leading him over to the couch. He only started talking once everyone was seated. "I'll cut to the chase." Alex nodded.

"Please." Steve took a deep breath.

"SHIELD wants to recruit you."

Alex couldn't stop the laugh that came out of his mouth. "Very funny." No-one was smiling. His smile faded, and he scowled at Steve. "How do you know who I am?" He got to his feet. "For all you know I am just an ordinary kid. As a matter of fact... I am an ordinary kid!"

"I told them who you are." It was Natasha speaking. This only made him more confused.

"What's going on Tamara? You're CIA... what are you even doing here?" He started backing away and bumped into someone. Bruce.

"Excuse me. Tony-" The man looked flushed, Alex noticed, but Tony waved him away.

"I'm a little busy here."

"I was undercover. I was never the CIA. It was Fury who-" Natasha began.

"Hold on... you're an Avenger?" Alex cut in. She nodded.

"I'm sorry. I wanted to tell you!"

"But Tony someone's-" Bruce started again.

"Why did you bring me here? What do you-"

"Tony-"

"What?" Natasha snapped at him. All eyes went to Bruce.

"Someone's trying to hack into our system!"

"What!" Tony exclaimed, pushing past him and dashing towards the stairs. Immediately Alex was forgotten as everyone ran down to the lab. He followed hesitantly, but as he reached the door at the bottom of the stairs he froze, staring at the far wall. Codes were flashing across a big screen that everyone, except Tony and Bruce, were crowded around.

"Let me." Alex found himself running over to the computer, where Tony was typing furiously in an attempt to ward off the hacker. He pushed him aside to gain access to the keyboard. It was something that he had learned when he had been forced to study computers for his first mission. When he had typed in the command and pressed enter the screen flickered before going black. There was silence for a few moments, then it turned back on. The codes were gone.

"How did you do that?" Tony asked him as Bruce clicked around for a few seconds.

"Brilliant!" he exclaimed. "Why didn't I think of that?" The rest of the Avengers walked over as Alex tried to talk his way out of the new situation.

"It was just something I picked up at school. It's nothing... really." Peter looked at him doubtfully, and he sighed. "Okay fine. I had to pretend to be some computer whiz who had won a competition. I had to do a lot of research."

"Darrius Sayle?" Steve asked.

"Yeah," Alex said with a nod. "How did you know?" It was Peter who spoke up now.

"It was in all the papers. That was really you?" Tony grabbed Alex by the arm.

"We need to talk kid."

Once he had been dragged upstairs and sat down on the couch, Alex was stared at for quite a while by Tony.

"Are you going to say something or can I leave now?" Tony sighed and resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

"Look... kid..."

"Alex."

"Right. Alex. You aren't just some kid."

"You just called me that though," Alex retorted with a straight face. This time Tony didn't attempt to conceal his irritation.

"You have saved the world more times than all of us combined! No matter what you think... you can't expect to be able to move on and forget this ever happened. That you happened." Alex pondered this for a moment.

"What do you want from me?" he asked quietly. Someone cleared their throat behind him, and he turned to see Natasha standing at the top of the stairs.

"Do you think you've got what it takes to be an Avenger?"